


the end of something

by Morning66



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: Angst, Funerals, Gen, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25578538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: Sophie hasn’t been to a funeral in decades, not since she was barely more than a child and the world was being torn apart, piece by piece, shrapnel littering the ground.(or, Sophie at Amy’s funeral)
Relationships: Sophie Foster & Amy Foster
Kudos: 21





	the end of something

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty sad guys!!!
> 
> I was thinking about how Sophie’s gonna live forever and poor Amy’s just a human and I was sad and then I wrote this!

Sophie hasn’t been to a funeral in decades, not since she was barely more than a child and the world was being torn apart, piece by piece, shrapnel littering the ground.

Those weren’t even really funerals, though. They were plantings, they were services, they were memorials, but not really funerals. They were the end of one being and the birth of a new, tiny saplings poking their way out of the ground, bearing uncanny resemblances to the people they came from. Sure, those little trees weren’t by any means a replacement for the lost ones, but they were life, hope.

This, though, this is a funeral.

The black doesn’t alarm Sophie, doesn’t surprise her. You would have thought it would, after all these years of teachings, after all these years of emerald green capes and tunics to honor life. 

But the black is the grief of her childhood, the tradition she was raised on that will never fully be beaten out of her, always still present deep beneath the surface. That’s what makes her the moonlark, though no one uses that term anymore.

She remembers when her grandmother had died, how it had crippled her mother. (Her first mother, she reminds herself. After all these years, her brain doesn’t hesitate to think of Edaline as her mother, the name mom easily slipping off her tongue.) How she’d cried, harsh, sad, lonely tears that couldn’t be stopped. They’d all curled in on each other on the couch, holding tight to what they had.

That was a long time ago now.

Sophie goes alone, not because no one offered to come, but because it feels right this way. It’s a sanctioned trip with a blue crystal she’s long been allowed to have, but that doesn’t mean they want to cause attention. She wears a black dress she bought at the mall two hours before because the only human clothes they had were too casual. 

(Hidden in the back of her closet behind frilly dresses that she still hates as an adult is her old human backpack. It’s frayed and torn, ripped, but not yet disintegrated. The purple is faded and the clothes inside haven’t fit for over half a century, but still she keeps it as a reminder.)

At the reception, Sophie picks up one of the cards that are stacked next to a bowl of mints.

Natalie Freeman, it reads. It goes on to give a brief description of her: her laughs, her jokes, her kindness. What a great mother she was to her three children, what a great grandmother she was to their children. It makes Sophie’s heart ache to read it, ache to think of how the little girl who she can still vividly remember driving her crazy grew up into this impressive woman.

Sophie wipes a tear that’s already forming in her eye and stuffs a mint in her mouth, not caring about toxic human foods, just relishing the burning feeling as it dissolves.

When they take their seats to hear the speeches people have prepared about Natalie, Sophie sits in the back, hoping one more mourner won’t go unnoticed. No one here knows her and they can’t. If anyone asks, she plans to say she was a nurse at the hospital, but she doesn’t want to lie, not today.

Her children speak first and Sophie can feel a smile form on her face as she watches them. Even though she hasn’t seen any of them in person since they were babies, she’s got many pictures stashed in her bedside drawer, first days of school and proms and weddings and births and days in the park, sun shining down on their beautiful hair. It’s nice to finally see them in person after all these years, even if she wishes it could be under different circumstances.

As she watches them speak, Sophie feels a deep yearning in her gut. In the elvin world, she has so much. She has found love and family and friendship time and time again. She has met the people who know her better than anyone, will and have stood by her through the darkest of times. Still, she wishes she could have known her nieces and nephew through more than just pictures.

She wishes she could get up on that stage and speak too. Tell the audience about how much she loved Amy, even if she did tease her about everything. She could tell the story of how they had gone on vacation once with their family, driving to Arizona and New Mexico and Texas. It had bored her out of her mind, long empty stretches of nothing and her and Amy had passed the time playing the car game, seeing who could find certain makes and models and colors first.

It hits Sophie hard in the gut that she’s the only living soul that remembers that trip now. For all eternity, it will be a memory confined only to her brain, forever etched in gray matter courtesy of her photographic memory.

When the speeches are over, Sophie joins the line to pay her final respects to her sister. It’s an action she did too many times during the conflict so many years ago. As she nears the front of the line, Sophie feels her heart begin to beat way too fast in her chest. A tear rolls down her face and this time she doesn’t stop it.

Amy’s laid out in the coffin. Her face is peaceful, her eyes are shut. The dress they’ve chosen is pretty, as bright as Amy was in life. The last time Sophie saw her was a month ago, late at night in the hospital. Amy had taken her hand, squeezed as tight as she could. Her hand had been wrinkled in Sophie’s smooth one and Sophie had hated it because it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Amy was her little sister, her baby sister. She was supposed to out live her and she definitely wasn’t supposed to look decades younger than Sophie.

Sophie kneels next to her, knees sinking into the cushioned stool. “I love you,” She whispers, hoping the other mourners think she’s praying. “I’m sorry I wasn’t always there. I was supposed to be and I’m sorry. I always loved you, Amy.”

When Sophie stands up, she wipes her hands on the edge of her dress and walks out of the building, head ducked, eyes on the ground. She doesn’t want to wait around to see Amy lowered into the ground. It seems too final to imagine her little sister under all that earth. Anyway, she doesn’t want to seem conspicuous.

As she steps outside, the sun glares down and she reaches up to shade her eyes. The funeral home is on a busy street and cars, not so different from the ones of her childhood, zoom by. Across the street two (human) girls walk together with their (human) mother laughing and talking. Sophie’s heart aches because lifetimes ago that could have been her and her family. Her first family.

With Amy forever gone, Sophie feels like something has been forever severed between her and the human world. She has nothing physical left here, only memories of what once was and even those memories aren’t always accurate. There’s nothing to come back for anymore. When she looks into her old spyball and asks for Connor, Kate, and Natalie Freeman there will be nothing to show. Nothing on this earth at least.

Checking for any passerbys, Sophie ducks into the alleyway and holds up her pathfinder, reminded of nothing so much as the first time Fitz took her to the elven world, the both of them still naive children. That had been the beginning of the end of her time in the human world.

This is the end of the end.


End file.
